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A comparison of techniques for solving the fleet size and mix vehicle routing problem

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Summary

In the fleet size and mix vehicle routing problem, one decides upon the composition and size of a possibly heterogeneous fleet of vehicles so as to minimize the sum of fixed vehicle acquisition costs and routing costs for customer deliveries. This paper reviews some existing heuristics for this problem as well as a lower bound procedure. Based on the latter, a new heuristic is presented. Computational results are provided for a number of benchmark problems in order to compare the performance of the different solution methods.

Zusammenfassung

Das Problem der Bestimmung einer optimalen Anzahl von möglicherweise verschiedenen Fahrzeugen in einem Fuhrpark sowie die bestmögliche Zusammensetzung verschiedener Fahrzeuge bei der Tourenplanung, wobei die Fixkosten der Beschaffung und die Kosten für die laufende Unterhaltung der Routen minimiert werden soll, wird diskutiert. Einige bekannte Heuristiken und ein Algorithmus zur Bestimmung einer unteren Schranke werden besprochen. Mit diesen Grundlagen wird eine neue Heuristik vorgeschlagen. Um die Leistungsfähigkeit der verschiedenen Lösungsmethoden zu vergleichen, werden anschließend Rechenergebnisse verschiedener benchmark Probleme vorgestellt.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Management Science and Statistics, College of Business and Management, University of Maryland at College Park, 20742, MD, USA

    F. Gheysens, B. Golden & A. Assad

Authors
  1. F. Gheysens
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  2. B. Golden
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  3. A. Assad
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Gheysens, F., Golden, B. & Assad, A. A comparison of techniques for solving the fleet size and mix vehicle routing problem. OR Spektrum 6, 207–216 (1984). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01720070

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01720070

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